News to Know

Hum, the aftermarket connected car add-on from Verizon, is about to get a little less friendly to the younger drivers in the household. An update rolling out later this month will enable geofencing and speed alert features, which are exactly what they sound like: a car's owner will be able to get notified on their phone when the vehicle leaves a pre-determined area or drives faster than a set speed.

Many parents want their children to learn to code. Tech leaders and educators are pushing schools to add more computer-science classes, and families often see programming as an essential skill for the future.

Too often when writing about what teenagers like, we neglect to talk to the most important group of all: teens. So we decided to put together a State of the Union on the American teenager. To learn what American teenagers in 2016 really like, and what they don't, we polled about 60 of them from across the US. We spoke with teens ages 13 to 19, in middle school, high school, and college.

Such data finds will shock many Millennials--and most people over 30--for whom Facebook signaled the rise of Web2.0. But, for many teens, Facebook is a hallmark of the past; halfway between Xerox and their new iPhone 6S.

A D.C.-area police detective who investigated teen “sexting” — i.e. teens texting nude photos of themselves to each other — killed himself last month as officers tried to arrest him on pedophilia charges. The allegations, if true, represent a grave betrayal of the public’s trust. But people should not settle for outrage over the irony of this detective’s personal failings. They should also demand reform of sexting laws that require agents of the state to violate teenagers’ bodies.